Steven Keewatin Sanderson

Writer Artist Creator

Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, he moved to Vancouver in 1999 to attend 3D animation at The Vancouver Film School. Upon finishing, he pursued a career in 2D animation.

Steven worked for five years as a storyboard artist and character designer in animation on projects such as “Ed, Edd n’ Eddy” and in video games doing cut scenes, concept art and character design on the Disney video game “Treasure Planet: Battle for Procyon" and for the game “Bully” for Rockstar.

In 2005, he was awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to develop his first short animated film called “Darkness Calls”, a story of an Aboriginal youth struggling with suicidal thoughts. A successful graphic novel followed.

Other subject matters that Steven has tackled range from children’s mental health, youth in foster care, staying in school and young gang members. Several other graphic novels have followed including “An Invited Threat”, “Level Up”, “Just a Story”, “Journey of the Healer”, “Path of the Warrior”, “Lighting up the Darkness”, “Droppin’ the Flag” and most recently “Rock Bottom” from McGraw/Hill-Ryerson and Illustrating "Blue Raven" for Pearson.

Steven has traveled extensively across Canada and the U.S. with speaking engagements at such prestigious institutions as UBC, SFU, BCIT, Emily Carr, Concordia University, Purdue University and Skype conversations with Oxford University and M.I.T.

Steven spent a month as an Artist in residence at the Eitlejorg Native American and Western Museum in Indianapolis and was a keynote speaker at the Alaska Native tribal health consortium and the Portland Native Health conference and most recently at the 2015 Comics and Medicine Conference to be held by UCR in Riverside, California.

Steven also appeared on the CBC four part documentary “8th Fire” where he was a featured interview and also contributed to the show's graphics. He is currently a storyboard artist on the Marvel television show “Avengers: Ultron Revolution” and will contribute to the upcoming Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection Volume 2.